The Fall From Our Stars (A Hazel & Augustus meets Sid & Nancy tale)
by insidethenout77
Summary: Hazel and Augustus have run away from the Cancer Motivation Tour and are hiding out in a penthouse above the San Francisco skyline. Their love is put to the test while in hiding for Hazel and Augustus's mental and physical health are in dire turmoil. It is during their zero hour in which Hazel and Augustus become more than just cancer kids, but legends.
1. Chapter 1

Hazel slouches on the floor in the furthest corner watching Augustus across the hotel room. He fans through his stacks of photo essays while adherent to not letting the champagne stray further than an arm's length away. He weighs against the grandeur window that serves as the fourth wall for the living room, as if Augustus is daring the boisterous 18' x 18' windowpane to give out and send him 25-floors to the hasty San Franciscan street. A cigarette dangles from his chapped lips and falls with his mindless swig of champagne. In the weeks leading up to Hazel and Augustus's Cancer Motivation Tour escape, Augustus had become mesmerized by photo journalism. Like any addiction, it started with a gateway, _The Best of LIFE: 37 Years in Pictures_. During the final weeks of Augustus's bid on the tour, he would retire early to his room with a bottle of champagne and his _LIFE_. He could easily sniff out the empathetic liquor store clerks who'd overlook his age. Augustus would spend whole afternoons obsessing over a single picture. He'd stare deep into the subjects' eyes and figure out what was running through that somebody's mind. Did they know this picture would make them famous? Did they know they would become immortal? Post-tour Augustus is not so meticulous but now merely leafs through the photographs like a robot trying to absorb as much information of the humanoids as possible. He lives in a different universe; one which Hazel has yet to be invited.

Hazel wishes that Augustus would pick up his own camera again. Somewhere in the hotel is a shoebox replete of undeveloped film that tells a happier version of the Hazel and Augustus tale. They recorded their travels from the past year while on the Motivational Tour. Proof of their love story is recorded in front of every hackneyed attraction that was afforded them. In those thousands of dormant negatives not so much as one hints at this somber version.

Without halting his mechanical page turning, Augustus asks disinterestedly, "Hazel Grace, why don't you go put on the sundress?" This is the first time in a week Augustus has spoken to Hazel without being spoken to first.

Hazel tries to speak up but her rusty vocal chords fail. She gives her throat a hearty clearing before trying again. "What?"

"That sundress. You should wear it."

"Why?"

"Makes you look immortal." Hazel has become too used to these overly-Augustan responses to even question him anymore. Regardless of however Augustus says it, she always admired how his soul is able to latch onto every syllable. And for the first time in God knows how many days Augustus looks at Hazel. Beneath his sunken eyes and dispassionate face, Hazel sees _her_ Augustus. Pre-tour Augustus.

Hazel pushes herself up from the floor and fetches the duffle bag from Augustus's side of the living room. Since running away from the Tour, this duffle bag is the only thing that's felt like a home. The Hazel and Augustus of old would have given the duffle bag a name and an entire backstory. They would have looked into each other's eyes every time they call the duffle bag by name, knowing that they are the only two people who can share in something so ridiculous. Hazel pulls out the requested dress and a folded letter falls from it. Nothing serious. Just their death pact. All part of a loving joke given the terminal nature of their cancer at the time. Hazel even went through the effort to type up something official-looking. Neither of them actually took to signing it in fear of stirring up an even more fatal hex than cancer.

Hazel buries the letter back in the bag. She strips down and slips on the dress in front of Augustus, keeping an eye on him to see if his stray. She loses that contest to a picture of a Peruvian alpaca herder. And then to a disquietingly long chug of champagne.

Hazel takes up part of the window next to Augustus so that he might catch a whiff of the familiar dress and, hopefully, the part of him he left in Amsterdam. Hazel leans against the pane and surveys the world beneath her, trying to remind herself that every one of those people, those weird little specs, have their problems too. But it never helps.

Augustus lightly drops his head against the glass and it is more than enough to trigger every drop of adrenaline through Hazel's system. Her hands lock, heartbeat notches up and, for but half a moment, thought she was destined for the pavement. In that half moment, she accepted death. It felt nothing like what everyone says on the Motivational Tour.

Augustus speaks as if he is trying to remember his lines, "Nobody gives a shit about blossoms anymore, Hazel Grace." Augustus takes another long pull of the champagne.

Coming down from her high, Hazel offers, "No?"

Augustus continues from his script, "We don't survive by the seasons anymore. We survive on 24-hour stores, never-ending cheeseburgers. Shit is all year-round. We don't ever lack anything." Augustus lifts his attention from his magazine to Hazel's sundress. His eyes take a moment to feast upon the pattern before moving on to her bare legs.

Augustus caresses her calf with his fingertips and continues, "The blossoms no longer carry any symbolism. New life and fertility doesn't mean anything. Blossoms have been reduced to only looking pretty." Hazel closes her eyes in an attempt to slow down and appreciate this rarity. She's not sure of when Augustus will touch her next. She looks down at him who longingly looks up at Hazel, as if waiting for _the_ answer.

"I'm a blossom," Augustus says. "A wilted little cancer blossom who is only admired out of sympathy. Like the blossoms, I'll be gone before spring ends."

"You don't know that," Hazel demands.

Augustus remains frustratingly casual and returns to the page but keeps his fingertips light on her skin. "Hazel, I know what cancer feels like. It's back. It feels hungry."

"Then we need to get you home!" Hazel protests.

"You said you wanted this for me too. No more doctors. No more chemo. I just need to be Augustus before I die."

"I take it back then. Okay? I take it back." Hazel searches for her next point. "What about your parents? What about me?"

Ten pages later he offers his Augustan response, "Look at this one." Hazel keeps a cold face as she glances over her shoulder down at the picture in his lap. It is portrait snapshot of a young Teddy Boy John Lennon who couldn't be older than seventeen. There's nothing exceptionally striking about the picture, aside from John's incomparable photogenic essence. Augustus continues, "He' doesn't have a clue what the future holds for him. He doesn't even know he'll be immortal."

Hazel takes a few extra seconds to get her fill of John's soft eyes before posing, "Yes he does."

Augustus looks back up at Hazel as she is lost in the image. He's always loved the way Hazel looks when deep in thought. And now, with the late afternoon Pacific sun haloing her head, she looks timeless. The rays gush through Hazel's sundress and reveal the true form from which the dress hangs. It's during these fleeting glimpses of happiness when Augustus considers going home and doing the whole hospital thing again. Hazel catches the smile stuck on Augustus as he stares up at her.

"What?" she says lightly.

"Nothing."


	2. Chapter 2

Their night routine is painfully monotonous. The pizza boy usually shows up around six with a medium meat-lovers but is never allowed in the room. Hazel has no problem slipping him cash from behind the door in case he's heard of the runaway cancer girl with tubes in her nose. As long as Hazel kept the drivers in money, there should be no reason to worry. Some nights the only contact Hazel and Augustus share is the accidental brush of a sleeve when reaching in for a slice. Those pizzas are nearly the only thing that draws Augustus close to Hazel anymore. This, coupled with their lack of cooking know-how, keeps Hazel free from guilt for ordering pizza five nights a week.

Tonight, Augustus gives his photo essays a breather and channels what is left of his attention into surfing the TV. Like flipping through pictures, watching TV all day can be done without having to give up the champagne in his hand. Augustus cycles through the newscasts trying to track down a glimpse of the _Hazel and Augustus_ _Story_. Those pictures of Hazel and himself plastered all over national television brought a misplaced satisfaction to Augustus that could only end in misery. Augustus finds a channel with a picture of him taking a jump shot while NEC.

Augustus jests, "Joke's on them. They'll all be looking for a basketball player." He takes victorious drink of champagne. They now show a family portrait of Hazel taken without her cannula.

Hazel jokes, "And someone without a hose up their nose."

"At least we're famous.

Finishing the piece of crust in her mouth, Hazel says, "It's because we're blossoms."

Augustus searches for another broadcast and retorts, "We're famous because people know we've run away to live our best life today."

"Not everybody thinks about symbolism and stuff the way you do," Hazel admits. Knowing that Augustus will stick with the TV for another next hour or so, Hazel steps out onto the balcony, guiding Philip with one hand and champagne and an empty glass in the other.


	3. Chapter 3

The sun has set hours ago but the city doesn't ever seem to. Hazel's nights out on the balcony are typified by an ongoing dialogue in her head that heats up with each glass of champagne. One voice says to call her parents and get some chemo back into Augustus's veins. The other convinces her this more romantic, allowing her boyfriend to spiral into his messianic void. Nothing ever gets solved out on the balcony.

The phone rings and pulls Hazel away from practicing how she'll call her parents. At this hour, it can only be Issac. Knowing that Augustus has already drunk himself to sleep, Hazel and her oxygen fetch the phone from inside.

Hazel answers, "Hello."

Isaac whispers on the other line, "Hazel. It's me".

"I know."

"How are things?" Hazel scans the ten or so empty champagne bottles, stacks of pizza boxes, piles of magazines, and Augustus curled up at the foot of the TV holding a bottle tighter than he holds her.

"Great. Just... living."

"Glad to hear that," Isaac pitches up. "It's crazy, cops and everything are still asking me if I know where you guys are and stuff. They've even got the fucking nerve to ask if I've _seen_ you."

Hazel laughs. "What do you tell them?"

"I give them the exact address, room number and your guys' shoe size." Isaac's playfulness is a much needed break from the pensive ball-and-chain that Augustus lugs around. Hazel pulls her ear from the phone to listen to Augustus make those tell-tale gurgles deep in his throat. She knows those thick, juicy sloshes always precede the regurgitation of champagne and chunks of the night's pizza.

Isaac continues, "Do you think they'd put a blind cancer kid in jail for lying to them?"

"I don't know." Augustus rolls over and spews all over the royal carpet.

"Even if they did arrest me I'd-" Hazel cuts him off.

"Isaac I've gotta go. I think Augustus is sick. Call you tomorrow." Hazel sits with Augustus and props his head on her lap making sure everything oozes properly out of his mouth and away from his lungs. This is all part of that painful monotony. Hazel massages Augustus's head as he seems to have purged it all out safely.

Augustus's lips make words before the sounds come out in, what Hazel hopes to be, a lucid thought. "Thank you." Hazel knows he will not remember this in the morning, he's hardly conscious. But it's always nice to hear while being said.

"You're welcome," Hazel says without censoring her heartbreak. "I love you Augustus Waters."

Augustus continues to stumble out words that don't seem to be his. "Hazel. I just want to die. I love you but I don't want to live anymore."

"I know, Gus. I know." Hazel cradles his head like the newborn she'll never have.

"That's why I want to be immortal. So I can have both."

"Both of what?"

"Love you and die." The last four words Hazel and Augustus ever share with each other.


	4. Chapter 4

One perk of having an 18'x18' window in your living room is the natural alarm clock. The sun cooks Augustus awake to an empty hotel room. Hazel had given him a pillow and a fresh shirt sometime after midnight. Augustus remembers Hazel cradling his head during the night but not the fresh shirt. Ten feet away is his puddle of pizza vomit. Augustus can visualize Hazel rolling his limp and lanky body across the carpet so that he had a clean place to sleep. This made Augustus smile. The kind of smile that only crosses you once you've figured something out. It must have been the clean shirt or the blinding sun but, for a moment, Augustus remembered that he loves Hazel and that Hazel loves him. Augustus sat there allowing the smile to soak into his cheeks and the sun into his skin as he recalls this ephemeral sensation known as love.

Augustus jumped up, slipped a cigarette between his lips and goes right for the remote control. Augustus flips on the TV to find a breaking news bulletin. The anchorwoman takes up the entire screen repeating over and over that the station has chosen not to show any of the breaking footage for the graphic nature of the situation. As any eager audience, Augustus's curiosity piqued. The next station, too, had an anchorman proud to be reporting something so horrific. Augustus cycles through his regular channels but still without a clue as to what happened. Augustus notices the folded letter that sat beneath the remote control. Their letter. Augustus opens the pact to find that Hazel has signed her half of the deal, initialed 'HL' and sealed with a fingerprint.

"Hazel!" Augustus shouts with more curiosity in his voice than worry. "Hazel Grace!" Finally, one of the stations has something to offer Augustus other than their sound studio. An aerial shot shows their hotel with a gathering of people and flashing lights at its base. That flood of adrenaline and uncertainty Hazel felt yesterday now surges through Augustus. The clammy hands and everything.

"Again, in case you've just joined us, a girl's body has been found dead on Mason Street from a possible suicide off of a nearby hotel. Eyewitnesses on the scene say an oxygen tank-" Augustus won't hear another word and runs over to the window.

"Hazel! Hazel!" Nothing. He knows why the crowd has huddled beneath and the streets are blocked off. Above him, a swarm of news helicopters get in line for their shot for the evening news. Augustus slams his skull against the window but it doesn't give. He thrusts himself into the pane with several running starts. Augustus's dormant athleticism has showed up for one final curtain call as he thrashes himself violently at the window. He even tries a chair. Whack! Whack! Whack! Nothing.

Giving his battered physique a rest, Augustus catches a glimpse of something familiar on TV. The camera now follows some deranged kid on the top floor of the hotel trying to lunge himself out the window. Seeing his room on TV makes the window look bigger than it he ever thought. The towering drapes are a stage curtain for the outside world; making Augustus the actor at center stage. He knew all eyes are on him. It is in these rare moments of complete "nowness" that give rise to legends.

Two ideas crossed his mind. Panic first. Augustus sprang for the door and out into the hallway to meet a line of geared officers marching for him. "Freeze asshole! Get down on the fucking ground!" came ubiquitously from the swarm of black. Augustus ran back inside and locked the door.

Now, for the second thought. As Augustus was trapped between the swarm of helicopters, the 25-floors beneath him and the infantry thundering down the hallway, it all came to him in perfect clarity. A photo journal at his feet was creased open to one of Augustus's favorite pictures; the famed portrait of a young Afghan girl staring into the camera. Her mesmeric eyes that refuse to stay one color look beyond the lens and the photographer, but into another dimension. Peoples, cultures and generations will know her and her story through just an image. She can't erased if she tried.

Without hesitation, Augustus darts into the bedroom and back out with that shoebox of undeveloped film. He litters the hotel floor with hundreds of those film canisters. The first smash came to the door and Augustus knew the battalion would break through any second. He picks up the nearest pen, likely the one Hazel used, and stabs himself mercilessly in the forearm. Another thrust to the door and the hinges almost give. Augustus dabs his thumb on his bloody arm and rolls a thumbprint on his half of the pact and signs it AW. The third kick blows in the door.

"Don't move motherfucker!" commands the first officer in.

"I loved her!" Augustus shows them the blood pact in his fist and takes the final steps towards immortality in a dash for the balcony. Hazel even left the door open for him. The two seconds it takes Augustus to sprint to the balcony were the longest two seconds of his life. Everything revealed itself in that millennia of time. He and Hazel would become immortal. Augustus saw it all. The mystery as to whether or not Augustus killed Hazel. The investigation fraught with conflicting stories and debate. The police will gather and publicly release thousands of undeveloped pictures of a couple of cancer kids madly in love. Families, friends, doctors and other Motivational kids will testify to the same thing, true love. Cops will find the suicide pact in whatever is left of Augustus's hand. Hazel and Augustus will become the stuff myth. Their story will be recycled in books, studies and made-for-TV movies. Their love will confuse, touch, anger and inspire millions. That, as far as Augustus has come to understand, is immortality.

Augustus leaps from the balcony with the grace and intention reserved for Olympic gymnasts. His face is chiseled in concentration. The bid for immortality would be compromised if he were to worry. Fear does not make the Most Important Images of the Century. Augustus's body does not flail out of control, but his every muscle is called upon to bring zen-like poise for the final seconds of what has been a very meaningful life.


End file.
